Alpha 1.4 and Running Your Business

Alpha 1.4 is out and contains the new freelance/contractor business feature. I gave an introduction to this feature in the previous post here. Today, I’ll talk about some other changes surrounding this new feature.

The most recent transactions are now listed when you click on your main account balance. This is useful if you have multiple businesses and they start generating income/deducting expenses from your account. You can see where the money is going, whether it’s paying for wages or materials, etc.

Your own businesses can also be assigned a hotkey now, so you can quickly access it. Just click “Pin” on the business you want to hotkey, and select a number from the list. This is helpful if you want to check up on your business, accept any available jobs and assign workers to jobs. Then once you’re done, press the hotkey again to close the business window and get back to your life.

There’s a new subscription, the Businezz Biweekly which provides you with advanced tips on running a business.

Since you’re running a business, you also get tax deductions. For those that are unfamiliar with how it works, a tax deduction is a reduction in your taxable income mainly from expenses you incur from running the business. Any business expense is a tax deduction, so for example if you made $10000 from the business and spent $7000 on marketing, materials, etc then you would only be taxed on your $3000 profit. You can see your total business income and expenses on the income statement of each business.

You can also sell a business if you have had enough of being an entrepreneur. The final sale price is influenced by recent business profits, brand reputation and awareness, and a few other factors. Your business is considered a sole proprietorship, which means its profits or losses are added to your personal tax return each financial year (and you are taxed at your personal tax rate, not a business tax rate).

As mentioned last time, the base price for This Grand Life will be increasing after this weekend. So if you want it at the lower price, head over to Itch.io before Monday!

Remember you can still vote in the online poll for what you want to see next. More content is currently in the lead so I’ll be working on that for the next update.